


Under Great Duress

by Tammany



Series: Mr. Spence's Repose [8]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Brothers, Gen, Holmes Brothers, M/M, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-13
Updated: 2015-04-13
Packaged: 2018-03-22 17:00:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3736669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mycroft and Sherlock contemplate the options open to Mr. Spence...and are brothers, in the process.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under Great Duress

“What happened?” Sherlock asked his brother, as they squatted in the narrow crawl-space under the roof of the cottage, collecting the IDs and other materials Mycroft had stashed in amidst the rafters.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mycroft said, and counted through the packets. These were not his only options, nor this his only stash. They were, however, the ones he had long thought best if he had to jump ship on his role as “Mr. Spence.” Several allowed him ways of carrying over some of his assets and contacts without being clearly traced. He held up a packet. “I think Ben Turpin is a good selection. If we kill Mr. Spence, Ben’s on the emergency bail-out lists for the clients. At least some of the business would transfer over.”

“Making it that much easier for your enemies to follow you,” Sherlock growled. He snatched the packet in spite of that, and riffled through it. “Boring. So boring. That must be the explanation: Three years out here in the hinterlands playing a vacuum-head, and even Lestrade looked like an overall improvement on your life.”

Mycroft’s anger was silent, but it poured off him in waves, like heat off the molten ore poured out of a Bessemer converter. Sherlock squinted and studied his brother’s still face.

“You ran England,” he said, querulously. “Hell, Mike, you ran half the world. What the hell did you find here among the goldfish?”

Mycroft closed his eyes. Sherlock could see the faint flutter of motion behind the closed lids—spot a tiny seep of moisture along the lashes. Mycroft’s mouth tightened, forming a straight, hard line, all anger and no softness or tender lip at all. “You’re the one with the problem with boredom, Sherlock.”

“I’m not the one who called the ordinary ones goldfish.”

“That’s different,” Mycroft said. He opened his eyes again, refusing to look at Sherlock. Instead he opened another of the packets. “This one’s a bit of a trick. Beatrix Carpentier. Shut-in. Translator, specializing in Romance languages. In time she can demonstrate a knack for the old medieval dialects, though I’ve kept her to the modern forms so far.. Common enough that no one looking will particularly associate it with me. My more obscure languages I can’t use—they’re like fingerprints. Spanish, French, Italian: I can work with those. Everyone speaks those.”

“You’re going to take up cross dressing, like Uncle Rudy?”

“I could. But I established her as a severe agoraphobe. I thought I’d put myself out as her hired help when I needed to go out.” He sighed, then. “I suspect that won’t be often. Not until I’m sure they’ve lost my trail.”

“Boooooooooring.”

It was an old fight between them. Mycroft struggled to understand Sherlock’s inability to keep himself interested. To Mycroft the universe was a fractal miracle of fascinating detail, with infinite regression of things to learn and consider. It didn’t matter what you chose to study: the field of knowledge extended infinitely, whether you went up in scale to the mega-monstrous or down to the micro-miniature. You could study your whole life, pick things apart for every second of every day, and never run out of amazement. The need to drug yourself to death out of boredom was, to Mycroft, insane.

“It will be interesting,” he said. “I’ve got a good resume as Trixie. She’s good with a range of styles—but there’s demand for her in business translation. She’s got a delicate touch with nuance. Her last client recommended her as producing more elegant, effective translations than the originals were.”

Sherlock growled. “You ran England. You were the British Government. Don’t tell me you don’t miss it.”

Mycroft finally looked at him, frustration writ clear in the crease between his brows, the sharp bracketing around his wide mouth. “I don’t. I did somewhat, the first weeks. I do not let go of habit lightly, nor set aside obligation with any ease. But even Anthea’s betrayal could not harm the nation: I planned well. After all, it was always likely any final exit on my part would be the result of betrayal and assassination. I had to protect England from that. The infrastructure should have kept her trapped in workable limits. Once I could see….” He stopped, and gave a crooked grin. In a reedy, mournful tenor, he sang.

They can still rule the land without you  
Windsor Castle will stand without you  
And without much ado we can  
All muddle through without you

He shrugged, then, and added, “It’s true. They can all get by without me. Once I knew that, it wasn’t that hard to simply change fascinations. Mostly a matter of a change in scale. Building client confidence and managing multiple projects isn’t truly that different to managing nations. And it left me time…” He trailed off.

“For what? Learning how to apply lemon polish to the cherrywood sideboard?” Sherlock sniffed. “I still think it was boredom. Nothing else explains…” He made a face, and a strange full-body gesture that somehow successfully communicated Lestrade, and romance, and all the other things that disturbed him about this new Mycroft. “It’s beneath you, blud.”

“So it goes,” Mycroft said, irony dripping as he riffled through the paperwork assembled for Beatrix. “Forever doomed to disappoint. That, at least, appears to remain a constant regardless of my incarnations.”

Sherlock’s eyes narrowed. He almost said something—something that would quite obviously have been scathing and rude—then held back, clenching his jaw instead. After a moment he said, sharply, “What else do you have?”

“A retired accountant—Cardiff. A job as a truck driver. It seemed….soothing.”

“You don’t like driving.”

“No. But it would keep me on the road and hard to track.” Mycroft spread the packets out like a fan. He folded them back together again. Spread them. Folded them. Said, softly, “Any one would do. Pick whatever you find convenient.”

Sherlock’s temper finally blew. “Do not play me like this. Do not. You are Mycroft Holmes. You force heaven itself to suit your own needs. God, Mike—what happened? Did this stupid role really destroy the brother I knew?”

Mycroft’s head rose. “Excuse me? I have successfully arranged my own death, my new identity, survived quite well in that role, and prepared new options. Without more than minor help from you.” Now his eyes narrowed. “I was quite good as Mr. Spence. Perhaps better at it than I ever was at being Mycroft Holmes. Mycroft Holmes owned a life. Mr. Spence _lived_ a life.”

The words slammed into both men, ripping at thoughts and hopes and fears neither could have stated or communicated normally. There was too much loss in that last sentence…

Sherlock swore.

Mycroft closed his eyes again, and leaned against the next rafter, threads of his hair caught in the rough splintered grain that had been kicked up by some ancient saw.

“You don’t want to go,” Sherlock said, at last.

“I have no choice.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“You didn’t ask anything.”

“Yes. I did. What happened, Mike?”

Mycroft opened his eyes and stared at the plywood sheathing overhead. “All my life I’d been in motion, moving forward, moving through, keeping active. With Mr. Spence…. With Mr. Spence I finally stopped moving. I came to rest. I’d never realized I needed rest so much.”

“And Lestrade?”

Mycroft just gave a watery smile that was grief and joy mingled.

Sherlock sighed. “You don’t want to go.”

“I have little choice.”

Sherlock nodded. “True. But…I’m working on it.”

Mycroft blinked at him, frowning. “You are?”

Sherlock huffed. “Well if you had given me a less mawkish, pitiful answer to what happened, I would have preferred not to…”

Mycroft managed a crooked grin, a faint hint of fond mischief glimmering. “Course you would.”

“It’s more expedient,” Sherlock snipped.

“Course it is.”

Sherlock glowered. “Just don’t say I never do anything for you.”

Mycroft smiled, then, and nodded. “I’ll just say you only do it under great duress.”

And then they changed modes, sorting through the packets again, contemplating what courses of action could be taken to keep Mr. Spence alive, if there were all these other roles that could be drawn on…


End file.
